Last month, we explored the latest in collaborative
commerce to learn how innovative companies are tapping into the networked economy.
We'll now see how they are improving their business productivity and sales,
along with building far-reaching relationships with new partners and
customers.

Please
join me in welcoming our guest to learn more about how agile
procurement is working for them on the sell side. We're joined by Cal Miller, Vice President of Business Development at Blue Marble Media.
Welcome, Cal.

Cal Miller: Thanks very much for having me.

Gardner:
Tell us a little bit about your company -- your size, what services and
products you provide -- and we'll start to learn more about how you're
selling in a new and innovative way.

One of the real benefits we found out early on Ariba Discovery is we can
help educate people on the process of looking for companies like us.

Miller: Even though we're very, very small, less than $2 million in revenue, we have clients like Georgia-Pacific, Verizon, Ariba, and the CDC.
We work with a lot of medium-sized companies and even startups, very
small ones. So the whole planet is our opportunity, if you will. We
develop video, motion graphics,
and animation for sales support, marketing, corporate communications,
and just about any type of visual presentation that you might need.

Gardner:
And is this a large and growing market? Is this not something you are
easily able to tap into? Why would you need to go through
non-traditional channels to get new business?

Miller:
Actually, it’s a very overcrowded supplier sector. We're a little
different in that we're a turnkey provider. We're not just a “video
house.” There are many of those out there, and they're good firms, but
we're much more strategic. We do well when we begin a project and can
interface at a C level with a company and help them come up with the strategy and the solution that eventually drives the message.

Our
strength quite often is something that people don’t know is even out
there. One of the real benefits we found out early on Ariba Discovery is
we can help educate people on the process of looking for companies like
us and then hopefully they are going to say, "Okay, we'll call you
back."

Halfway to goal

Gardner:
As someone who is already on the Ariba Network, they need to know and
need to acquire, so they're halfway to finding the goal. You're going to
need to go halfway toward them with your specific differentiating value
and make that understood.

This notion of spot buying however expands that, it allows more than just a structured procurement
professional who is looking for services and extends this down to
people who are doing ad hoc, occasional, once-in-a-blue-moon types of
buying. How has that worked out? Tell me a little bit more about how you
even got involved with Ariba Discovery and spot buying at all?

Miller:
In our world spot buying is probably half of our total business. Even
large companies may only have a need for a high-profile video series
once a year, two times a year, or every other year. So the people that
are charged with developing that solution quite often aren't the people
who are going to be writing the check or making the procurement, and
vice versa.

So
the real challenge there is to get these people to understand that
there is a vetting process. Ariba has provided this service, so a
company like us can sit up and say, "Hey, we're a little different than
the other guys. Let’s engage and start some dialogue."

Gardner:
What has been the result? Let’s learn first about how long you've been
doing this? What’s the timeline on how you have been using Discovery and
extending that to that spot buying type of clientele?

We've learned that you still need to respond, because you get that opportunity to almost simulate a face-to-face meeting.

Miller:
It will be a year in a couple of weeks. We took a few months to learn
the system, ramp up, and get going, but we've already had a very nice
project and contract from a national bank that came through the network.
And we have kind of a follow-up project with them. So that will be
additional revenue.

We have several opportunities that
have been presented to us and we are in different stages of developing
those projects as they move forward.

Even on a few of
the introductions that we've passed up, we've made a response, but we
knew it wasn’t a good fit. We've learned that you still need to respond,
because you get that opportunity to almost simulate a face-to-face
meeting, because they get to learn about you, and you're building a
relationship.

One of the biggest challenges that people
on this network don't realize is to not look at your computer screen
like it’s just another interface computer screen. You're looking through
the eyes of Ariba at a real, live person on the other end- who can
write you a check, and that changes the dynamic of how you communicate
through the Network.

Gardner: And if it’s not a
right fit for them, they might have a word-of-mouth, community, or
social connection with someone that they could refer you to. So there
are concentric circles of engagement.

Circles of engagement

Miller:
That happens very often, especially with the larger companies. It’s,
"These guys can do this. Here, give them a call in three months or pass
this on to Joe, because they are going to need this." That’s worth its
weight in gold. You can’t get that by knocking on the door or shooting
out a bevy of emails. It just doesn’t happen.

Gardner: Now, as a mid-market company,
a smaller company, you are of course price conscious yourself. What was
the spend experience when you got involved with Ariba? How did you step
into the water?

Miller: We had been a supplier
to Ariba for about a year and a half, and then it was suggested that we
needed to be on the network. We looked at it and started at the basic
level. Within about four months, we realized that this is really a good
deal. So I spent a lot of time learning more about it, and we
immediately upgraded to the Premium Advantage level. It's the best
investment we ever made.

Gardner: So this was
sort of a crawl-walk-run approach, where you didn’t have to spend until
you had the commensurate revenue to back it and make it logical?

Miller:
Yes. And for us as a small company, and many of you listening may be
able to identify with this, we have all these different marketing and
sales-support options out there, and they are all good tools in their
own right. But if you have limited time and budget, to me it was a
no-brainer. This is the best way to make use of our time, get the
quality of leads that we need, and make the contacts that we're looking
for at a C level.

We immediately upgraded to the Premium Advantage level. It's the best investment we ever made.

Gardner:
And that seems to be especially the case when an organization like
yours has a significant, maybe even a majority, portion of your sales in
that ad-hoc spot-buying type of engagement.

Miller:
Very well summarized, Dana. That's very true. For a company like us, we
would love to get ongoing contracts, but in our world and with the
product and service we offer, it doesn’t come that way. So spot buying
is going to be the focus of how we utilize our partnership with Ariba.

Gardner: When you live quarter to quarter and you have to roll that rock back up the hill, it’s nice to have a partner to help you.

Miller: Absolutely. I wish this had been around 20 years ago.

Gardner:
Very good. We'll have to leave it there, I'm afraid. We've been talking
about how the mounting need for spot buying is benefiting companies who
are selling into that type of engagement.

I'd like to
thank our guest for joining us. We're here with Cal Miller, Vice
President of Business Development at Blue Marble Media in Atlanta. Thank
you, Cal.

Miller: Thank you very much. Enjoyed it.

Gardner:
And thanks to our audience for joining this special podcast coming to
you from the 2013 Ariba LIVE Conference in Washington, D.C.

I'm
Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host
throughout the series of Ariba sponsored BriefingsDirect discussions.
Thanks again for listening, and come back next time.